Investing Research Articles

What are the implications of mainstream economics for bitcoin? In his March 2024 paper entitled “Bitcoin: What Does Mainstream Economics Have to Say?”, Joshua Hendrickson tackles the following questions: Why does money exist and what role does it play in society? How does bitcoin fit our understanding of this role? What is bitcoin worth? Is… Keep Reading

Are there plausible ways to forecast the price of bitcoin? In their March 2021 paper entitled “Bitcoin Price Forecast Using Quantitative Models”, Daniele Bernardi and Ruggero Bertelli examine fundamental bitcoin value from four perspectives: Stock-to-Flow modeling that addresses evolving scarcity based on quantity of bitcoin already present in the world (Stock) and quantity of bitcoin… Keep Reading

Does the increase in number of Bitcoin wallets at a rate that far exceeds growth in number of Bitcoins explain the dramatic rise in Bitcoin price? In the December revision of his paper entitled “Metcalfe’s Law as a Model for Bitcoin’s Value”, Timothy Peterson models Bitcoin price according to Metcalfe’ Law, which posits that the value of… Keep Reading

Speculator level of interest (attention) is plausibly key to bitcoin price behavior. Does the level of online searches for “bitcoin” as a proxy for attention usefully predict bitcoin return? To investigate, we examine interactions between monthly worldwide search intensity for “bitcoin” as measured by Google Trends to represent speculator attention and monthly bitcoin returns. Using… Keep Reading

Does Bitcoin have a bright future, or is it only a transitional proof of concept? In their March 2018 paper entitled “Bitcoin: A Revolution?”, Guillaume Haeringer and Hanna Halaburda review incentive mechanisms that make Bitcoin work and discuss current and potential uses of Bitcoin and related technologies. They view Bitcoin as the first successful digital medium of… Keep Reading

What do expectations for Bitcoin supply and demand imply for the future trajectory of its price? In the January 2025 revision of their paper entitled “A Supply and Demand Framework for Bitcoin Price Forecasting”, Murray Rudd and Dennis Porter construct a supply-and-demand model to forecast Bitcoin price trajectory. Their model combines a fixed, inelastic supply… Keep Reading

Benford’s law states that the probability of the value of the first digit in many naturally occurring samples of numbers, including asset prices, varies inversely with digit magnitude. For example, the number 1 (9) appears as the leading digit about 30% (less than 5%) of the time. For asset prices, deviations from this law typically… Keep Reading

Bitcoin is a currency based on cryptographic proof rather than traditional trust, with transactions taking place directly between users and recorded in a distributed public ledger. How wild is the exchange rate for this new form of currency? In their November 2016 paper entitled “A Statistical Risk Assessment of Bitcoin and Its Extreme Tail Behaviour”, Joerg Osterrieder and Julian Lorenz… Keep Reading

How should investors assess whether the market is fairly valuing cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin? In his March 2019 paper entitled “Bitcoin Spreads Like a Virus”, Timothy Peterson offers a way to value Bitcoin based on Metcalf’s Law (network economics) and  a Gompertz function (often used to describe biological activity). The former model estimates fair price… Keep Reading

Are gold and bitcoin similar assets? In his December 2020 paper entitled “Bitcoin is Exactly Like Gold Except When it Isn’t”, Claude Erb compares and contrasts the following aspects of gold and bitcoin: Inflation hedge – how well an asset tracks some measure of inflation/purchasing power. Store of value – the ability of an asset… Keep Reading